


Tell it slant

by Denois



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Poetry, surprise! it's requited!, you'd know that if you ever used your words!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29692197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Denois/pseuds/Denois
Summary: Nursey isn't going to let a minor little thing like his huge, unending crush on Dex blind him to the fact that Dex has truly subpar opinions about poetry and no exposure to culture whatsoever. Maybe Dex's inability to correctly analyze Emily Dickinson poems would finally be the push Nursey needs to get over the impossible crush and move on.Or maybe it's not such an impossible crush, and Dex just tells the truth slant.
Relationships: Derek "Nursey" Nurse/William "Dex" Poindexter
Comments: 21
Kudos: 97





	Tell it slant

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to Theo and [Draskireis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/draskireis) for the input on Emily Dickinson poems and the beta read through.

Nursey frowned at his notes.

> Then there’s a pair of us!

He pressed a finger against his temple and rubbed slightly.

> I’ve heard it in the chillest land

His throat tickled and he coughed to clear it, before blinking several times, trying to get the words on the page to focus.

> But I might moor - tonight -  
>  In thee!

He concentrated harder on focusing on the words on the page. What did it matter which Emily Dickinson poems Dex had decided to discuss with him? It wasn’t like Dex picked which poems he was assigned to read.

> Because He knows it cannot speak—  
>  And reasons not contained—  
>  —Of Talk—  
>  There be— 

Dex was just working on an assignment. He didn’t mean anything. The poems didn’t mean anything. Nursey was just projecting. Again.

“Okay, I apologize for sharing my ‘pedestrian’ takes on Emily Dickinson. Can you look at my essay response now?” Dex’s hand and papers appeared over the side of his study carrel.

Nursey blew a raspberry in response, sputtering before he could manage actual words. “Become cultured first.”

“All right. I’m just gonna start reading it out loud.”

“I’m not helping you.” 

He seriously couldn’t stand to listen to Dex talk about 269 and wonder who Dex might think about when reading it. Did it even make Dex think of someone?

“‘However, it’s interesting--’”

He had to interrupt. “Dex, you can’t start an essay with ‘however’. Why do you have contractions in an essay? What?” 

He pushed his own notes aside, he needed to subdue the pining thoughts before he could work on them again anyway, and took the papers from Dex. At least reading Dex murder the English language would probably dampen his crush for a little while. Maybe.

It couldn’t hurt to try.

> However, it’s interesting --  
>  how when Emily Dickinson plays with,  
>  structure - punctuation - word choice,  
>  she’s a genius and there are hidden  
>  depths in meaning.
> 
> Will my pauses and stilted words  
>  be seen as beautiful by a poet  
>  one day?  
>  Was she as awkward  
>  with expressing what she felt  
>  as I am?  
>  I don’t know.
> 
> What is the difference  
>  \- the line -  
>  between an intentional choice  
>  for poetic license and a  
>  grammatical mistake?  
>  Is it the bias of the reader?  
>  The care and willingness  
>  to believe in good intentions?
> 
> I’ve lived with a poet -  
>  he left poetic license all over the floor  
>  of our shared space.  
>  My mistakes are still mistakes  
>  to him. But I wonder, if maybe  
>  \- one day - they could be poems.
> 
> “Tell _all_ the truth, but tell it slant.”  
>  “Truth must dazzle gradually - or every man be blind -”  
>  But when I tell my gradual truth, it goes unheard.  
>  So I’ll tell it all at once, using borrowed word.
> 
> Because I cannot stop for Death,  
>  He will one day stop for me  
>  Until then I would greatly like  
>  To ride a while with thee.

“This isn’t an essay response, Dex.” He let the papers fall onto the table and looked up, expecting to see Dex’s head pop over the divider.

It was a poem. It was a poem that sounded a lot like Dex wanted someone to like him. Like Dex liked someone. 

And Nursey told himself the part about living with a poet wasn’t about him. It couldn’t be. Because then would the rest of it be for him? Dex wasn’t a poet. He wasn’t a poetry guy. 

Nursey’d just been chirping him. Mostly.

“He’s not here.” It was Louis who responded, not Dex.

Nursey frowned and stood up, walking around to the open table where Dex had been sitting with the Waffles while they all worked on essays and homework. “Where’d he go?”

Bully didn’t glance up as he transferred notes from one notebook to another, color coding as he went. “The SAWC, probably. He left you a note.”

A frown pulled at his lips, trying to weigh down the hope he was feeling, as he picked up the note.

> I’m not good at this. I’m not good with words and rhyme and meaning. I’m not a poet, I’m poor and I’m pedestrian, and I like poems that I can imagine might be about us, being a pair. Poems that reference Frogs. I like poems that make me think of you and my favorite poems are the words that fall from your lips in murmurs when you think no one can hear and the press of your leg against mine on the couch at the Haus. 
> 
> You say that we can’t be line partners again until I can analyze and understand Emily Dickinson? I will learn. 
> 
> I will study and I will learn and we are a pair. We are a good pair. Together. We are good together and we could be more.
> 
> So can I get a look ahead at the syllabus? I’d really like to start working on my project for a thesis of asking you out, and I need to get good scores on the essays for being your friend, and being your best friend, first.
> 
> Even if I fail the capstone thesis, I’d like to have enough time to work on them all.

Louis leaned over. “He said if the answer is no then I’m supposed to take that from you and eat it or burn it so there’s no evidence.”

“And that he’ll pretend he never wrote it if that’s what’s chill.” Hops glanced up and then back at his work.

“He went to the SAWC?” He decided to ignore Louis’s and Hops’s statements. They were inconsequential. Instead, he focused on Bully, who still hadn’t looked up.

“Probably. He goes there after every study session.”

“Why?”

At that, Bully finally looked up and blinked at him. “To get his work checked. He likes getting your input because he respects you, but he doesn’t actually expect you to edit them or whatever.”

“Oh.” Nursey moved back over to his stuff and started packing it away, tucking the papers from Dex into his notes as he did.

He had thought that Dex expected free labor from him. Everyone on the team expected free labor. From him it was creating bibliographies for Lardo, or editing and formatting Bitty’s thesis. But it wasn’t just him. Bitty was always making pie for everyone (granted, that seemed to happen whether people requested it or not). People leaned on Chowder for emotional support. 

Dex hadn’t done anything specifically for him, for anyone other than fixing the oven for Bitty, but he was always fixing stuff around the Haus. 

So, Nursey had just figured that Dex saw it as all part of an even trade or something. That Nursey’s personalized skill in draft editing was worth the same as Nursey’s stake in whatever repairs Dex had done to the dryer recently. 

It was one of the things that had been making him question why he liked Dex. 

Now he was starting to wonder why he hadn’t asked Dex out already.

By the time he got to the Student Athlete Writing Center, he was all but convinced that he definitely needed to ask Dex out.

“Which citation style does this prof want?”

“Uh-” There was the sound of papers flipping. “WGSS 340, papers should use MLA citations.” 

The door that Dex’s voice seemed to be originating from was closed, so Nursey moved to stand across the hall and wait.

“Okay, most of these are good then, but it looks like a couple are mixed up. Maybe with Chicago style?”

“Ayuh. AFAM 224 used Chicago and it still trips me up. Why can’t everyone agree on APA?” There was a pause before Dex continued. “Okay. I think I’ve got those fixed. Were there any other issues?”

“Nope. Just those and the couple of comma rules we talked about. And the one contraction that slipped in. Unless your professor has weird preferences on tense or structure, you should be good.”

“Cool. Thanks. Hey, uh, do you guys help with like, analyzing poetry and stuff? Understanding meaning? Or just formatting and editing the papers?”

There were sounds of packing up and Nursey pulled at his sweater to make sure it was laying nicely, even while continuing to try to eavesdrop.

“No, sorry. You’ll probably need to talk to a WAM about that.”

“Right. Thanks.” 

The door opened and Dex froze as he locked eyes with Nursey. Then after a second, life seemed to return to his limbs as he moved out of the way so that the writing center employee could leave the work room.

“Hey Nurse. Sorry if I ran over into your time slot.”

Nursey moved to fall in beside him as he walked. “You didn’t. I was waiting for you. Got your note.”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have left that. I figured Louis would be eager enough to burn it that it wouldn’t last long enough anyway. I-” He stopped and ran a hand through his hair. “No. Just. I’m sorry. I won’t make it weird. I’m gonna work on stuff still, just need to make an appointment with a Wellie Athlete Mentor.”

“You don’t have to go to a WAM.”

“I kinda do, Nurse. Bully’s great, but he’s not my line partner. I’m not gonna figure this shit out on my own. So, a WAM. Unless-. Shit. I guess unless you don’t want to be partners anymore no matter what. That’s chill. That’s, I can deal.”

“Shut up, Poindexter. I’m saying that I’m not giving you homework assignments in order to be my friend.”

“I’m trying. You know? I’m not-. I haven’t-. I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time, but I’m trying. It’s just really hard to catch up when you’re so far ahead.”

They were on the quad and the golden hour sun was making a halo of Dex’s ginger locks and Nursey really wanted to run his hands through them. See if he could catch the halo. 

Instead, he reached for Dex’s arm. “Hey. I said shut up. I know you’re trying. And I don’t always see it. Maybe when you tell it slant, try italics instead of subtext. I thought I was good at subtext, but you’re teaching me that maybe I was wrong.”

Dex gave him a sidelong look and the barest twitch of the corner of his mouth. “Open bracket, E, M, close bracket, I like you, open bracket, backslash, E, M, close bracket. Ayuh. I think I could manage that.”

Nursey ran the words over in his mind. The _I like you_ part was thrilling to hear, but he was still trying to sort the rest. “Hold on just a second.”

He pulled out his phone and opened a browser to do a quick search. “Ok, yeah, that should work.” He shoved the phone back into his pocket. “And, for the record, I like you too.”

“It’s fine, you don’t-. Wait, what?” Dex finally turned to face him incredulously.

“That’s why I was trying to find you. To ask you if you wanted to get dinner tonight. As a date.”

Dex stared at him and didn’t say anything.

Nursey smiled winningly.

Dex continued to stare at him without saying anything. 

Nursey thought back over everything Dex had said in his note and since they’d started walking together. He was pretty sure that he hadn’t read the situation wrong. But maybe it was still slant. Could Dex have meant something else when he mentioned a thesis of asking him out?

“I haven’t even started on the essay.”

“What?” 

His cheeks growing slightly pink, Dex tilted his head and looked away. “I haven’t started the essay about Emily Dickinson yet. Much less the thesis for asking you out.” 

Nursey looked down at his hand, still on Dex’s arm, and let it slide until it was at Dex’s hand. “You’ve tested out for full credit. It’s chill. And it would be mad chill if you’d answer about dinner.”

Instead of answering, Dex pressed his lips together and looked around flustered again. 

“Dex?”

“Yes, I want to go on a date with you tonight. It’s just. _I_ was going to ask _you_ out.”

“Sorry, Poindexter, too slow.” 

He leaned in to poke Dex with his other hand, but then Dex caught his hip and he stilled.

“Can I kiss you, then?”

“Ch’yeah.”

Dex’s lips dragged across his gently, as Dex pulled him in closer. By the time they parted, the sun had fully set, and it took Nursey a moment to catch his breath. 

“Come on, Dexy. I’m taking you out, and then we can do that some more. If you want.”

**Author's Note:**

> SAWC is pronounced sauce.
> 
> References to Emily Dickenson poems include:  
> I'm Nobody!  
> Wild nights- Wild nights  
> "Hope" is the thing with feathers  
> Tell all the truth but tell it slant  
> "Why Do I Love" You, Sir?  
> Because I could not stop for death
> 
> I will probably never recognize this bit of word of god in the form of an extra again. There are a lot of implications in it that strike me in the wrong way about everything. If canon is a buffet where I can pick and choose what I want, word of god extras are the condiments table that I can skip entirely.


End file.
